dictionary summary

Frédéric Mistral was a poet who led the 19th-century revival of Occitan (Provençal) language and literature. He shared the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904 (with José Echegaray y Eizaguirre) for his contributions in literature and philology. Mistral’s father was a well-to-do farmer in the former

Noah Webster was an American lexicographer known for his American Spelling Book (1783) and his American Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vol. (1828; 2nd ed., 1840). Webster was instrumental in giving American English a dignity and vitality of its own. Both his speller and dictionary reflected

Samuel Johnson was an English critic, biographer, essayist, poet, and lexicographer, regarded as one of the greatest figures of 18th-century life and letters. Johnson once characterized literary biographies as “mournful narratives,” and he believed that he lived “a life radically wretched.” Yet his